Comment by n4r9

I think you're talking about a subtly different thing. OP was simply saying "it's very possible to be a rational independent thinker and yet be non-centrist". What you're saying is "a lot of people I've met who are more left than me are impractical".

Relating to your point, I would add something based on my experience in the UK. In the last 30 years we've twice had a Labour leader elected. Both times campaigning as a hard-nosed centre-left pragmatist, and with some on the left echoing similar sentiments about compromise and pushing the needle.

Blair admittedly did some good stuff - Lords reform and minimum wage. But he also introduced and then tripled university fees, greatly expanded private initiatives in the public sector, and engaged in an activist interventionist foreign policy culminating in the invasion of Iraq. These are changes whose ill effects we're still reeling from as a country.

Starmer is looking to shape up very similarly, from his U-turns on private school charitable status, tuition fees and the two-child cap, to his reluctance to condemn the Gazan genocide and cuts to disability allowance.

Was it better to have these as prime minister Vs the conservative candidate? Yes, probably. Can they really be said to be pushing the needle? I doubt it.